President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were rapidly retaking more territory, especially in the south of the country, as Putin’s seven-month invasion unravels.
Biden said the United States was “trying to figure out” Putin’s exit from the war, warning that the Russian leader “is not kidding when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, arguably, significantly underperforming.
“For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of nuclear weapons use, if indeed things continue the way they’ve been going,” Biden told Democratic donors in New York on Thursday.
“We haven’t faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said. In the 1962 crisis, the United States under President John Kennedy and the Soviet Union under its leader, Nikita Khrushchev, came close to using nuclear weapons because of the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
“I don’t think there’s a possibility of easily (using) a tactical nuclear weapon and not ending Armageddon,” Biden said.
Putin, who turns 70 on Friday, has warned that he will use all necessary means, including Russia’s nuclear arsenal, to protect Russian soil, which he now says includes four Ukrainian regions that he annexed. Speaking to Australia’s Lowy Institute, Zelensky said NATO should launch preemptive strikes against Russia to prevent its use of nuclear weapons.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced the comments as “a call to start another world war with unforeseeable and monstrous consequences,” according to the RIA news agency. Russia annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which make up around 15% of the country, after holding what it called referendums, votes denounced by kyiv and Western governments as illegal and coercive.
Since Europe’s biggest annexation attempt since World War II, a Ukrainian counteroffensive has pushed Russian forces into further withdrawal and recaptured large parts of Kherson. Zelensky said in a video address Thursday that kyiv forces recaptured more than 500 square kilometers (195 square miles) and dozens of settlements in Kherson in October.
“There are also successes in the east. Surely the day will come when we will report on the successes in the Zaporizhzhia region (in the south) as well, in those areas that the occupiers still control,” the president said.
Reuters was unable to independently verify accounts from the battlefields.
Ukrainian forces have regained control of thousands of square kilometers of territory since early September as the Russian front line has crumbled, first in the northeast and in recent days in the south. In a rare but growing public criticism of Russia’s top military brass, Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russia-backed administration in Kherson, said Moscow’s “generals and ministers” did not understand the problems on the front lines.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not comment on this.
Discontent has begun to rise even among loyal commentators on state television.
“Please explain to me what is the great idea of the General Staff now.” Vladimir Solovyov, one of the most prominent Russian pundits, said on his channel.
“Do you think time is on our side? They have greatly increased their number of weapons,” he said of the Ukrainian forces.
“But what have they done in that time?”
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, where Ukrainian forces recaptured a large swath of territory in September, the bodies of 534 civilians, including 19 children, were found after Russian troops left, police official Serhiy Bolvinov said. The total included 447 bodies found on Izium. He also said investigators had found evidence of 22 “torture rooms.” There was no immediate comment from Russia. On Thursday, a regional governor said a missile brought down an apartment block in the city of Zaporizhzhia, in the region of the same name that Russia says it has annexed.
Ukrainian rescuers had recovered 11 bodies and rescued 21 people from the rubble of buildings destroyed by missile strikes in the town, the State Emergency Service said in a statement.
In an online speech at the European Political Community’s new energy and security forum, Zelensky accused Russia of targeting the same spot twice to kill first responders.
“In Zaporizhzhia, after the first rocket attack today, when people came to collect the rubble, Russia carried out a second rocket attack. Absolute vileness, absolute evil.”
Russia says it does not attack civilians. A Ukrainian missile hit a bus in the Russian-controlled city of Kherson, killing four people and wounding three civilians, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.
In the previous 24 hours, Russian troops carried out eight missile attacks and 15 airstrikes and fired more than 70 salvos from multiple rocket launchers in Kherson, the Ukrainian military said early Friday.
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